Sarah Hudson Pierce: Making friends is a dying art

Thelma Pepper told her friends that when she turned 90 years old, she would be done participating in 5K races and fun runs. But after her 90th birthday on May 8, she had a change of heart.
(Sarah Crawford/The Times)

George Eliot wrote "Oh, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

Because my mama never taught me not to talk to strangers, I've met some of the most interesting people just by striking up conversations with strangers in the produce aisle or anywhere our paths crossed.

Within the past few years I've made a number of new friends just by striking up conversations with people who either look familiar or by complimenting a stranger's style of dress or my favorite hair color, silver, having inherited this shade, having prematurely turned gray when in my early teens.

Just yesterday I met one in Dr. Carter Boyd's office and another when my daughter took me out to eat in Jason's Deli. (Both love my writing, which makes me smile.)

In other parts of the country it might not be wise to talk to strangers, but here in the South we seem to understand the beauty of spontaneous conversation in public places.

My 97-year-old friend, Gypsy Damaris Boston, wrote a story about how we don't use the front porch much anymore for conversation. The front porch has but been done away with on many houses today.

In the backwoods of Arkansas where I was born at home in 1948, near Sulphur Springs, in a house built in the 1840's, we rode to town in a horse-drawn wagon until 1955, when we moved into town.

We had no electricity or running water. And in fact the only people we hardly ever saw were a neighbor or two who would sit outside in the evenings while my sister and I played or lay on the grass waiting for the first star to come out, or trying to catch the fire flies who kept us company while the adults chatted about whatever they talked about.

As we have become more remote we've lost the art of conversation as the social media and television, plus air-conditioning, have shut down staying outside at night. We have lost something more.

Too often we come to church as a routine. I call it rote religion where we punch time clocks. We don't really look at each other when we talk. Life can become a habit. We have lost so much in the process of having more and more, yet losing what we crave most in our quiet hours.

We have given up feeding our spirits with human connections, the kind of bonding that can be found only in heart talk, which may start out as casual conversation until we reach another level.

We all need to be needed.

One way to find friends is to make small talk with those we meet in church, or in the market place. I believe that God places people in our paths for different reasons.

There are no accidents.

Someone has said "our friends help us test the water."

Our friends were all strangers before we met.

Sarah Hudson Pierce is a writer who lives near Mooringsport. Contact her at sarahp9957@aol.com.